


Ready to start

by hisen



Category: Naruto
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Break Up, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kid Fic, Kid Hatake Kakashi, M/M, Memory Loss, Mentioned Hatake Sakumo, Mentioned Namikaze Minato - Freeform, only one side knows it's a break up, permanent age regression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 17:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18370718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hisen/pseuds/hisen
Summary: Kakashi wakes up twenty years in the future to find his sensei dead and that there's no way back.Tenzo lets go of the most important person in his life for his own good.





	Ready to start

He leans out as he opens the window, the cold air refreshing after the stuffy hospital. The clothes, brought to him by a stranger he doesn't recognise but who knows him, fit him well enough. He climbs onto the sill, balances on it lightly as he looks up, then jumps up onto the next sill, until he's up on the roof.

It's not an escape, he needs a break. If he does escape, they'll bring him back anyway. Kakashi has been patient, or more truthfully, knocked so sideways by finding Sensei is dead here that he's going through the motions, not arguing with his confinement. The endless tests, check ups, the strange visitors he doesn't know, one who looks a lot like Sensei but definitely is not, and keep coming back even when he tells them to leave him alone. He just wants to be alone with his grief. They won't even tell him what happened. All they tell him is that Minato was hokage when he died, and he died protecting the village. He once wondered, after his father died, if it'd hurt less if he'd died a hero instead of a failure. It does not. Hero or not, Minato is still dead. 

From the roof he can see the faces carved into the rocks. Sensei stares into the distance, Tsunade there next to him. It's disorientating, extra faces suddenly appearing. People look at him with respect, much more respect than he's used to, but they seem surprised by his behaviour. They are looking for someone different in his eyes. Surely he can't have changed that much? People can't change that much. 

Guy, for example, hasn't changed. He's still the loud, determined idiot he was as a kid. He laughs off his words like always, calls him his rival, but he's suddenly an adult towering over him, booming voice and fully muscled too. Guy convinced him this isn't a genjutsu or some sort of nightmare, if not intentionally. Guy is fully grown but remembers their last face off before he woke up here, in the future. He tells embarrassing stories nobody else could know, competitions nobody else ever saw. Kakashi must be really here, but why is he here? Something happened on a mission, nobody knows what, how or why. To him, he fell asleep and then woke up twenty years in the future. The tests circle on, he aces them, perfect scores, but they shake their heads like he's failed them.

Kakashi doesn't fail. He refuses to fail, to not be good enough. He will succeed, whatever the cost. His fingers tighten on the guard rail, he must succeed, failure is not an option. He can’t be a failure. 

Something flies through the air, he catches it, it's a blanket. The thrower laughs, behind his cat mask, and hops up from the tiles of the neighbouring building to join him. 

"Are you taking me back?"

"No, you need some air. I understand." Kakashi frowns at his guard, who ignores it, takes the blanket from his hands and wraps it around him carefully. "It's cold though. There." The tone is familiar, far too familiar for a guard, and he bristles at it. He can put a blanket on! He might be young but he can take care of himself.

"Who are you?" Kakashi knows he's an ANBU, assigned to guard him while they figure out what happened to him, but there's more to it. He's one of the people who knew him in this future, which is now suddenly his present. 

"You can call me Tenzo."

"I can take care of myself."

"You certainly can. But you don't need to bear everything alone because of that. It's okay to rely on others, too."

"Not true. You can only rely on yourself. Everyone else will let you down." Sensei didn't mean to. He's not like the idiots he's surrounded by, he's sure he would never do it intentionally, but he has. Right now Kakashi needs his help, his guidance, but he's gone too. Just like his father, killing himself when Kakashi still needed him more than anyone, even if he was ashamed of him. The thought hits him like a physical punch, the pain of both deaths hitting him again, just as raw as they were days, years ago, and he turns away, blinks away tears furiously. He’s too disorientated from this new time, from Sensei being gone too, to repress them like he should. A hand on his head lightly touches his hair, and he's trying too hard to hold back his tears, not choke on them to tell him to stop, get off, not to touch him.

"I'm sorry about Minato-sensei, Kakashi-senp...Kakashi-kun. And your father. It hurts to lose such important people and things, doesn't it?" Kakashi covers his mouth, even though his mask already hides it, shakes his head. What does this Tenzo know about losing people? There's a click of his tongue but it's sympathetic. Tenzo crouches down, meets his eyes through the mask. The eyes are dark brown, and sad. It's a look he recognises from the mirror, of grief and loss, raw and immediate. There's another touch on his head, the hand lingers on his hair as Tenzo gets something out of his pouch, a tissue, and hands it to him before standing back up and letting go.

"When I was a little younger than you, I woke up in a hospital with no idea what had happened too. I lost everything. My memories, my family, my name, nearly my life too. I had nothing but a power I didn't even ask for. It was difficult." Tenzo looks down at him, he doesn't say anything, still too choked up with grief. For his father, Minato, for his future that's now the past to everyone else. 

"I had to make a choice. Was I going to curse the heavens and rail against my fate, or would I embrace it and do my best with what I was given? I chose to embrace it. It was still hard, I made lots of mistakes, but I don't regret it. By doing it, I found people I could rely on." 

"But they all leave." His voice finally comes out, plaintive, pleading, like he's five and not nine, still believing the world can be different. It makes Tenzo pause, makes him cringe at sounding so naive. Tenzo considers it like he’s not being foolish, and he doesn't call him naive. 

“We both know people die. But they don't leave, they still live on in your heart, and in your actions. People live on in mine. How do you think those who are gone want to live on in you, Kakashi-kun?" It is easy to picture how Minato would want to live on him. Through bravery, talent, loyalty. Success. Sensei is the kind of person he'd like to be, even if he'd be stricter than him. But he thinks of his father and his stomach feels like it's filled with rocks. His father can't live on in him. He couldn’t even live for himself. 

"My father was wrong. I can't be like him."

"Was he? I don't think so. I don't think you really think that, either." The comment makes that anger flare up in him, what does he know about it, he has no idea what he’s been through because of his father's mistakes. He grabs Tenzo, fingers digging into his uniform and Tenzo lets him. There's no resistance, Tenzo only moves when the blanket slides off his shoulders to reach over to pull it back up over him. 

"Everyone turned on him! They all thought he was wrong. He was! How has that changed?"

"You'd be surprised. There's a lot of shinobi who'd disagree now. They have their own way, and they're fighting for it. Maybe that's why you've got a chance to redo this, it's time for a different way. They can live on here." He lets go of Tenzo as he taps, very lightly, on Kakashi's chest, over his heart. "And on that, I think it's time to go back in. Sorry." Kakashi starts to object, wants to argue with this adult who's assuming all these things, assuming it can be different, but Tenzo sighs and runs through signs he doesn't recognise. The wooden beams that burst from Tenzo's arm shocks him, enough to freeze him for a second, which makes it even easier for it to scoop him up and then lift him down, carefully, back through the open window into his room.

"How can you do that?" For all his anger at Tenzo, at his assumptions and lectures, Kakashi can't hide the wonder in his voice. It is the first thing in the future to strike him as incredible in a positive way. Something that he might actually want to see, that might be worth being here for. 

"That's the power I was talking about." The voice calls from above him as he leans back out of the window, cranes his head to see Tenzo. "Good night." Seeing a display of mokuton for real doesn't make him want to sleep, it makes him want to know more. There's one surefire way he can see more of it in action.

"Tenzo, can you take me on a mission? I'm a chunin, I'm really good, you wouldn't regret it."

"Sorry, I can't do that. This is probably the only time you'll ever see me."

"Because you're an ANBU? I could do that."

"No. Do not do that. You're destined for better things, Kakashi-kun. Remember what I said but forget about me. Now, go to sleep." Kakashi objects but already, Tenzo has vanished. Kakashi pauses at the window, lets the breeze blow against his face, and then shuts it with a slam.


End file.
